"You said I went to Rose's. I know you did."
She confessed to that, for she was truly sorry for it.
"But I didn't mean to, Mr. Dyker," she added; "honest, I didn't. It just slipped out. I didn't know Miss Marian knowed you. Why, she told me she didn't know you, an' how'd I ever think she'd lie?"
That was a question which, ignorant of Miss Lennox's precise method of evasion, Wesley did not, even to himself, attempt to answer.
"It didn't matter whether she knew me or not," he said; "you had no right to tell it."
"I know that. It just slipped out. But it won't never happen again. I wasn't so wise as I am now."
"I hope not," he said, a trifle mollified by the sincerity in her tone. "But you've done me a big amount of harm there, Violet, and you have got to undo it."
Her first sensation had been one of relief in finding that her false affidavit was not held against her; her next had been fright at his anger; but now she was all penitence for the ill she had wrought him. Dyker was the one man in New York that had done her a kindness, and she held that kindness as the greatest possible.
"What do you want?" she asked. "I'd do most anything for you, Mr. Dyker: you know that."
They were under the uncertain light of a crossing. He eyed her narrowly, mistrustingly.